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Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi

theguardian.com

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Re: Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi

#201

Post by Throwaway0988 »

vijaybritto wrote: post #159
Throwaway0988 wrote: post #145

As an Indian, the situation is a bit more complicated than what the article frames it as. Religion (and caste) have always been a sensitive issue, to the extent that there are multiple laws preventing people from "inciting" others (and yes, these laws are often abused by whichever government happens to be holding power, including the ones before the current government) - this is especially true for public figures lik…

> While this is true, it also needs to be mentioned that Delhi is not under BJP government (the ruling party). This is false. Delhi's law and order is directly under Amit Shah, the country's home minister(BJP).

Ah, just checked — I stand corrected. You are right, NCT is under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Home Affairs[0] (and thus under BJP).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Police

Re: Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi

#202

Post by Throwaway0988 »

throwaway38471 wrote: post #173
Throwaway0988 wrote: post #145

As an Indian, the situation is a bit more complicated than what the article frames it as. Religion (and caste) have always been a sensitive issue, to the extent that there are multiple laws preventing people from "inciting" others (and yes, these laws are often abused by whichever government happens to be holding power, including the ones before the current government) - this is especially true for public figures lik…

Let me try to politely address each of your point one by one: Its unconstitutional and abuse of power whether current government did it or previous government did it. We can name it anything; "arrest", "detention" or a "trip to Disney". But it does not change the meaning when police takes you away. Do you think India's law & order system is so weak that they have to arrest a lawmaker and take him to a far corner of c…

> Its unconstitutional and abuse of power whether current government did it or previous government did it.

Agreed, I wasn't trying to make it sound okay (it isn't) — rather was just trying to point out that this has been going for a while. What others might see as "ruling party trying to establish monarchy" is simply revenge in their eyes. This will continue to happen with the next change of government as well.

> We can name it anything ... when police takes you away.

Again, I was pointing out that this might as well be a simple case of police detaining someone they feel could a threat to peace with Johnson's visit — won't be the first time either. I'm not trying to defend the government, just trying to offer another perspective to the people holding pitchforks.

> Do you think India's law & order system is so weak that they have to arrest a lawmaker and take him to a far corner of country because of a tweet?

Religion is a sensitive issue in India — really, when public figures try to incite people through social media (not talking about this incident in particular), speeches or any other medium, the only options left are to sit and watch what may turn into a riot (leading to loss of lives and destruction of property), or simply arrest the person preemptively. Is there any alternative?

And yes, people with power (which includes Modi, Owasi, and all politicians in general) often do get away with these remarks, kind-of proving how law and order is "weak".

> And they made the whole country safe by arresting a lawmaker?

Which is the point I was trying to make — this seems to be a detention, a temporary action taken as a precaution (and yes, with zero proof). The guy will most likely be sitting in jail while Johnson is in India, and be free once his detention ends.

> Its really surprising ... conveniently shared false information with HN.

Ouch, that assumption of malice. The way you worded it seems like contempt... Do we really need to be at each others throat, can't we just be two people simply discussing a topic (that just happens to be politics)?

To answer your question, I was actually unaware of the (weird?) structure for government bodies in Delhi[0]. Given how you framed your question, I guess I'm more of a buffoon than the evil-guy-trying-to-sow-misinformation...

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31137298

Re: Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi

#203

Post by true_religion »

naoqj wrote: post #83
leephillips wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India never had freedom of speech. Opposition newspapers are often harassed and shut down. They have a law criminalizing offending religious feelings. This is not an exaggerated paraphrase, that’s what the law says. A scientist was convicted under this law a few years ago for demonstrating that a “weeping” statue of the Virgin Mary was not actually weeping blood. The truth was offensive, so the law applied. EDIT: I r…

> They have a law criminalizing offending religious feelings. Happens in the first world too! 2018: "In Europe, Speech Is an Alienable Right: [the European Court of Human Rights] upheld an Austrian woman’s conviction for disparaging the Prophet Muhammad." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr...

Although I know what you meant by 1st world (e.g. Western Europe / N. America), I found it funny because technically Austria isn’t in the first world and never has been. Since it never aligned itself with the US, Austria was considered a 3rd world country just like Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Hungry and Mexico.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World

Re: Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi

#204

Post by actuator »

webartisan wrote: post #181
actuator wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> engage with whataboutry, If you really want to discuss with civility, don't start with an accusation. I agreed with the commenter that there is definitely political motive to these demolitions and it is definitely not right to not follow procedure even if these are illegal. My point is against this belief that this is something recent. It has been always like this, no matter who is in power. It might have increased…

Why would you compare violence from 1980's to 2020? You realise thats a gap of 40 years? It's almost as if you're trying to find a previous period with same communalism rates going back as far as you need to to prove point. In terms of trends in the 20th century, there's been a clear noticeable jump after the current government came in, which is what should matter.

> Why would you compare violence from 1980's to 2020? You realise thats a gap of 40 years?

I said 90s too which is a gap of 20 years. I skipped 00s because I don't recall the data completely now, but I will check.

> In terms of trends in the 20th century, there's been a clear noticeable jump after the current government came in, which is what should matter.

00s had clearly more terror incidents in India than 10s. There were several major metros and big cities hit with blasts every year. So, one form of communal violence has definitely gone down. Even early half of 10s had much more of these than the latter half. There is a whole Wiki article that lists these incidents, you can have a look at that.

Re: Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi

#205

Post by mayankkaizen »

throwaway38471 wrote: post #174
hef19898 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right from the Nazi playbook, and extremely scary...

And PM of India also does a regular monologue which is broadcasted across all govt news channels, radio stations, translated to multiple languages, sent through mobile app of govt/pm. They even spam you on your emails if you ever used your email to deal with govt services. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Ki_Baat

And yet he is so coward that he always avoid interviews, except for may be 2-3 interviews (read PR stunts) which were conducted by sycophants like Rajat Sharma who has dedicated his life to Modi.

Other than that, he never faced any open interview in his 8 years tenure as a PM of biggest democracy.

Re: Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi

#207

Post by jrm4 »

colpabar wrote: post #137
jrm4 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good, this means that the people here are smart. Hence why I said get everyone else :) (i.e. I legit wasn't thinking about people posting here)

It also means that you are the one taking an issue outside the US and injecting US politics into it. Don’t do that!

No.

Re: Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi

#208

Post by jrm4 »

lolinder wrote: post #134
jrm4 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good, this means that the people here are smart. Hence why I said get everyone else :) (i.e. I legit wasn't thinking about people posting here)

It's less to do with people here being smart, it's that the US culture war is off topic. :)

Last I checked, Twitter and Facebook, and a few others were

1) wildly overpowered in terms of speech

2) frequently accused of censorship

3) pretty damn globally influential

I would love for the US not to be so influential in this regard, but that ain't the world we're living in.

Re: Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi

#209

Post by dang »

naruvimama wrote: post #182
mayankkaizen wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally they are same but their depth of crimes aren't same. Congress did appease minorities but it never was like 'let us kill all muslims'. Fundamentally and ideologically, congress is neither anti hindu or anti muslim. However BJP/RSS has always been ideologically against muslims. It is in their blood. It is the party of religious bigots. If you read the history of RSS, you'll find RSS was established not to…

Quoted post unavailable.

We've banned this account for using HN for nationalistic and religious flamewar, which is not what this site is for and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi

#210

Post by dang »

mayankkaizen wrote: post #197
naruvimama wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

[flagged]

Please do not post flamewar comments, especially not nationalistic or religious flamewar comments, regardless of how badly another account is behaving. This only makes everything worse. We need you (and everyone here) to follow the site guidelines even when other commenters are breaking them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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